The Veterans of Chelsea Hospital - 1844 Author:George Robert Gleig Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: made me aware that they were not going to deal leniently with me any longer. I was, therefore, fain to accept his proposal, and prompt to tell him so. Perhaps it... more » may be necessary to state what the south side of Gibraltar is. A sort of suburb, which lies beyond the inner line of works, yet is covered by the more advanced entrenchments, and subject to ' the English government, the south side, as it is called, enjoys so much of the character of an asylum, that no warrant, except that of the governor, may there be executed. Accordingly, when men become so completely involved that there is not only no peace for them elsewhere, but the constant danger of arrest, they remove into that suburb, where, if they can pay exorbitantly for a bad apartment, they have at least the assurance that no bailiff will break in upon it. As may be imagined, the party on the south side was far from being composed of the elite of the garrison. A sort of Alsatia on a small scale, it exhibits, on the contrary, features just as revolting as those which may be seen within the rules of the Bench, where men, grown reckless and hopeless, seem to take leave of all decency ; and having no characters of their own, affect to despise the maintenance of character in another. In a word, the south side is to Gibraltar what Holyrood or the Abbey is to Edinburgh — a place of refuge, by keeping within the limits of which the unfortunate debtor is saved from the restraint of a narrower prison. I really do not know why I should have entered so freely into the colonel's scheme; I knew perfectly well that there was no chance whatever ofgetting my debts paid — that I had no friend in the world who would so much as trouble himself to inquire after me; and hence that the smash, which my flight to the south side might defer, must ...« less